I placed another order with Reef Scavengers and got a colony of yellow gorgonian. Yes, I know it's a non-photosynthetic gorgonian but all the ones at the jetties are too. These are at least possible to keep, and I've become a food farmer, raising nanochloropsis and rotifers to feed the crew. They certainly seem to respond to them, Here's a preliminary shot of the yellow.

Cool, as long as you feed it, it should be happy.

Nice! Looks just like the ones i see around here.

YB,
Tank looks amazing as usual. I would be interested in how you are raising nanochloropsis and rotifers. I am almost done finishing my basement and will be having my own lab soon. I have been working out some details on a Gorgonian tank, as I am very interested in these animals and would love to have a thriving tank of them.

I live on the Chesapeake Bay and have been trying to figure a way to harvest cultures locally to feed them. Our waters range any where from 45 degrees to over 80 degrees depending on the time of the year. I have already set up a pod/crustacean breeding population from local animals in a small tank and that has been very successful. I am hoping I can do the same with a smaller food source. Harvesting (very muddy, lots of cuts and scrapes) and quarantine was the biggest challenge with the pods, but after 6-7 generations of them breeding I feel I have good, disease resistance stock that I use to feed my fish. I am wondering if something similar can be accomplished with smaller organisms.

-Prof

Prof, sounds like you've already had more experience than I have, so rotifers and microalgae should be a snap for you. I got my cultures of algae and rotifers from this guy, but mainly because he was local. They can also be purchased here and here and I am sure many other places, but those links will also give you good information on how to raise them. I think they are typically raised in monoculture, as a way to get hi yields, otherwise a balance occurs that may not be favorable to what you are trying to get. For instance, if you contaminate your algae culture with rotifers, then you've lost the algae. The rotifers will eat every bit of it.
I use a 5 gallon salt bucket for the rotifers, though a 10 gallon tank is suggested in several places, and 2 liter coke bottles for the algae culture. While it's not deemed necessary, my next purchase will be a microscope, as I feel kinda insecure with trying to raise something I can't see!
Good luck with it, I'm sure you'll have success. Isn't it fun to have a home lab!

Oh, Prof, in relation to what you are doing with local collecting, I had an interesting experience yesterday.
A member asked for macroalgae so I went snorkeling at the jetties. Weather was foul, and visibility was terrible, but I did get in the water and managed to collect a clump of sargassum, but it was several things all growing together, not a very good specimen. I took it home anyway and put it in a small tub. The water had leaked out of the collecting container, so I took some water out of the jetties nano to cover the plant. Suddenly the water was alive with these odd "praying mantis" type creatures. Unfortunately the thermal shock killed most of them, but I got a shot of what they looked like.


Leslie on RC was kind enough to identify them as carpellid amphipods and I found a link to them here. They are commonly called "skeleton shrimp". The article mentioned that they are preyed upon by many creatures, so I wondered what would eat them in the jetties nano. Well, I couldn't find anything that wouldn't chow down on them! Anemones, the rusty gobies, nasarrius snails, cup corals, hermit crabs. And I'm not talking casual munching, I'm talking "Gimmeee, Gimmeeee, Gimmeeee!!!" It was quite interesting. With your experience, I may attempt raising them myself.

Wow! Now that, and the link info from Shimek, is really cool! I've certainly never seen or heard of skeleton shrimp. I love reading about this tank!

This tank is so interesting! So many different things going on, and it's so different. Good luck with the new gorg, though I'm sure you won't need it

The tank is looking amazing as usual, and nice find on the skeleton shrimp! Once while I was tidepooling I found a large boulder and the entire surface, other than what was exposed to direct sun was covered with thousands of inch-long skeleton shrimp giving the rock a somewhat "furry" appearance. A confusing, and somewhat scary find.

-Jamie

Jamie, I can imagine, it kinda freaked me when I reached in the bag and pulled the mass of grass out and when it went into the water all those little "aliens" came climbing out I found out that they may have been the model for the movie. I can believe it, they were real freaky looking! They apparently didn't scare any of the critters in my nano though, as they munched them like candy!
By the way, I love the look of your coldwater biotope. Collecting beats going to the lfs, doesn't it!

I know, I've gotten really spoiled. I've only bought one new coral for my tropical tank in months! I am going to need to buy a bigger chiller for my CW tank for this summer though. I think it'll be worth it though; I'm going up to puget sound next week, so hopefully I'll be able to get some cool Urticina anemones, which are my favorites. Too bad oregon is too far south for them (without scuba diving, at least).

-Jamie

Sounds like you need to get your divers license. Heck, a dry suit is only $1500 or so. I tried diving at Coos Bay with a wet suit once, I thought I was tough after logging several hundred dives in the springs of Florida (68 fegrees) I was so wrong. 55 degree water is so freaking cold, I lasted about 20 minutes on one dive, and no more. Brrrrrr. I woudn't have lasted that long but the kelp forest was so cool, I got distracted.

How thick was your wetsuit? I'm getting a 5/4 for surfing this summer, I'm hoping it'll be enough to dive in. I went snorkeling up in puget sound a couple years ago with a rented wetuit, which was too big for me, and stayed in the water for about five minutes. It was amazing stuff, but I could hardly keep my snorkel in my mouth I was shivering so hard.

-Jamie

6 mill, but an old style ill-fitting one that didn't help much at all. I can just imagine the shivering!
Diving at the jetties I use only a 2 mil now, but it keeps me much warmer than the old one did, and the water's 65d.
I really don't like to be so cold though. I don't think I'll ever drown, but I can easily imagine freezing to death. That's why I'm moving to the tropics!

YB,
Thanks for the info! I am definately going to check into those sites. We have the skeleton shrimp up here as well, but I have not been able to get them to breed as well as the the pods. You are definately right about everything eating them up though. When I first set up my cultures, I placed the skeleton shrimp in a different tank from the other pods until I could ID them because they were so damn creepy looking. They just don't seem to reproduce as fast and they definately seem to like colder water IME. I have only been able to collect them in the winter months up here. I think temp plays a big role for these guys. I like to breed several generations on these wild caught goodies before introducing to my tanks because of the enormous pollution problem we are experiencing here on the Bay. I am just not comfortable pulling the stuff right out of the water and tossing it in my tanks.

If you don't already have a one, grab a copy of the National Audubon Society Field Guide for Seashore Creatures. It covers all manner of Inverts; Anems, Crustaceans, Corals, Pods, Molluscks, Gorgs, etc. of North America. It is particulary useful for us local collectors on the east coast and I have found it invaluable for identifying oddball things (like those skeleton shrimp) that you are not going to find in aquarium reference books. It also talks about ranges, habitats, and diets for most of the animals described. I would guarantee that if there is something on your jetty that you can't ID, it will be in this book.

If your looking at setting up a breeding population, let me know and I can give you a run down of how I have it working and then you can modify to suit your needs.

-Prof

Thank You Prof, for the lead on a good field guide. I'm always on the lookout for suitable references to the critters I see when diving and snorkeling and you are right, the aquarium references are pretty weak, especilly on Florida and Caribbean species. Diane turned me on to a great book on Echinoderms, that I've found very useful. Oh, that I could find equivalent books on other inverts and fish. I use an old copy of J.G. Wall's "Fishes of the Northern Gulf of Mexico" to determine what's legitimate to keep in my jetties biotope. I've been running borderline with it for awhile though, since it's really tough to keep some of the stuff alive that is found there.
I will be contacting you by PM to give me some insight into how to run a "food farm" for my tanks. I've got nannochloropsis to grow successfully, but my L strain rotifers have apparently succombed, as the nano algae is beginnign to grow in the rotifer container. I understood that they would keep it eaten out. When I strain the water through a filter to remove the rotifers, I can't see anything, but I still go through the motions of feeding it to my tank. Maybe more is there than I think. When I fed them yesterday, the yellow gorgonian opened it's polyps nicely, so I also spot fed him some algae for good measure. One branch didn't open as a hermit saw fit to climb up to see if there was anything to eat.

Since I don't have a reference to what corals for sure could be at the jetties, I've been going page by page through Veron's "Corals of the World" to try and determine what I can expect. I've got my lfs ordering some rock from South Florida that is likely to have corals on it, so I can have them in the tank. It's been interesting trying to decipher the range maps in Veron's. Starting with something I know is here:


and might be here,



and borderline possible,



and not likely, unless some polyps got lost in the currents and global warming allowd them to extend their range



For reference, the jetties are in the East-Central Northern Gulf of Mexico (is that even a direction?) at Panama City Beach. Apparently many know where it is, as the latest poll puts over 500,00 Spring Breakers here this year.

Good deal. Hermits play hell with my Gorg too. I have one that actually prefers to perch all day in the thing. Drives me and the Gorg crazy.

I think you will like that book. While it is not the end-all, be-all definitive work on what lives in our waters, It has not let me down yet and covers a most of what a tidepool wader or shallow water (i.e. < 80') diver will see.

I have also been playing with the idea of a drip delivery system for filter feeding inverts, but it is still in the chalkboard stage. I'll pass along any success I may have.

-Prof

I hope you get something suitable for the Jetties Tank. I think most range maps these days should be taken with a large dose of salt, as I do not think they have been seriously updated in decades. I personally believe that if someone took a large look at todays coral ranges, they will find significant range migration and species overlap compared to the maps of old. Particulary in the Indo-Pacific range. The one exception I can think of may be the Red Sea because I think salinity differences and currents would mitigate against too much migration. I did a lot of diving in the early 80's in the Red Sea just outside of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and to this day it has still been the best diving experience of my life. I shudder to think of what the reef there looks like now.

-Prof

Your statement prompted me to look at the publishing date for Veron and it was first published in 2000, with updates (however extensive they are) in 2003, so maybe it is still accurate. They had an extensive list of the dives they took to update the reference, and two were in the Keys and one in Tampa. There were even some shots by Sprung of corals in "The Gulf of Mexico"
A brief perusal of diving opportunities still lists the Red Sea as one of the top destinations to see "unspoiled reefs" My experience has been that if the pressures damaging reefs are removed, they can recover very rapidly. My latest diving overseas was in the Philippines, off Moalboal, and a major typhoon had devesatated the reefs 5 years earlier but there was little evidence that any damage had occurred. Most acropora's, after all, do not live extremely long lives, and are used to covering areas quickly. Kill a big Porites boulder though, and it's like cutting down a redwood, it'll take a thousand years to replace.
As for the hermit, I've taken to forceably removing the little buggers from the gorgs. They seem to get the hint after a few times. But that might not be the usual experience. They are typically only curious, it seems, as they'll immediately go after anything new in the tank. Notice from an earlier post that the yellow gorg has sprouted a new branch, (glued to the same rock the first one is on to give a better overall appearance ) and since it was new, had to be investigated.

This is one of the coolest nanos I've seen!!! Well done!!

still looks great

Glad to see your range maps are fairly recent. Hopefully you will get some good stuff on your rock!

I agree with your statement that the reefs could recover quickly given that the pressures on them are relieved. However, as I am sure you know that is not a popular opinion and is not shared by many people. I find most so called enviromentalists (I am not speaking of the true scientific types) to be under-informed, hypocritcal and overly reactionary. It is interesting to note that some of the hard core environmentalist movements are considered domestic terrorists by the government.

IRT to the Red Sea, that experience remains one of the highlights of my life (right up there with the birth of my children). If you ever get the opportunity to go you have to take it. I lived in Saudi Arabia for 2 1/2 years and we camped on the beach at the Red Sea once every month for all that time. We literally drove out of the city across the desert until we hit the Sea, picked a spot and pitched camp just above the high tide line. We then spent the rest of the weekend diving and snorkeling. There was absolutely no one around and we only saw someone one time when a bedouin wandered by with a small herd of camels to see what we were doing. The reef itself was so pristine and beautiful it is beyond description. That experience is what got me into reef tanks and I frequently picture the form and shape of those reefs when I am setting up my tanks.

-Prof

Now's when I begin to indulge in some wishful fantasizing about the odds of any tropical coral larvae getting lost and lodging at the jetties. Here's a map of the Gulf Loop Current that comes out of the tropics between Yucatan and Cuba, potentially carrying larvae to this area. The jetties is the white dot on the Northern Gulf Coast and the white line is the rough location of the Flower Gardens Reef Banks.

Looking at the current mapping I would say that is in the realm of possiblity. I am interested to see what you get in.

-Prof

Wow, this is one of the best nanos ive seen. Ive been thinking about making a south florida biotope, since i live about 2 miles from the ocean. This is a huge motivator.

You should have no trouble at all with setting up a SF biotope. There is aquacultured rock available and you could probably hand-choose it to get just the livestock that you want, plus there is just so much available from local collectors. On top of that, get a fishing license and a copy of the regulations and you'd be pleasantly surprised what you can collect yourself.
Good luck with it, and keep us posted.

Yahoo, the rock from South Florida came in, can't wait to get to the lfs to see what he has. Claimed that there is some "nice coral" on the rock. I warned him not to sell any of it until I got there or I'd let the air out of the tires of his maintenance truck!

You fight dirty!!! Can't wait to see pics of what you get. Hurry up!


-Prof

Awesome!!! I started my first reef tank with FL aquacultured rock and so loved watching all the life on it - tunicates, sponges, corals, clams, etc, etc. Someday will do it again and then stick with all FL life, your tank is great inspiration for it. Love the aquascaping!!

Pics of the new rock??????

Okay. I went to the lfs after the owner called me to tell me that the rock I'd asked him to order came in. I checked out every piece, and while I was a little disappointed, I ended up with three pieces of rock, that weighed 10# and he charged me $50. I took it home and managed to remove 4 pieces of coral. Two were Oculina, robusta I think, and two were Phyllangia americana, maybe. Veron is funny about his corals. The only corals he identifies are the zooxanthellate ones. Phyllangia is azooxanthellate, but Borneman has a good picture of one in his coral book, and that's where I id'd them.
One of the Oculina, note that the bleached portion is still alive, Oculina can be either zoo or azooxanthellate. Apparently that section was shaded in the water,


The other,


The Phyllangia (lesser cup coral) as it looks in the day, this piece had several polyps damaged, they didn't take great care in treating the rock like anything special.


And here is a shot when I snuck up on them in the dark.


While they are all brown, at least they are authentic. I've seen similar corals at the jetties. If you have the patience to look back at the first page of this thread, you'll see a similar coral growing on a rock in the channel.
The rock has some other stuff on it too, maybe tunicates and sponges. I've got the pieces in a quarantine tank, with water from the jetties nano (did a water change) If they survive, I'll try and get them off and into the nano. I used a wood chiesel and hammer to remove the corals. One came right off, the others took some serious whacking. I was worried that the shock would damage the corals, but they seem no worse for the wear.
Enjoy!

That would really be wonderful!




Very fascinating story & pic. I love these sorts of finds!




Sweet pic!




Thanks for the ref. This is now on my wishlist.



Yuck. How does that affect your quality of life?




In other threads, I and others have noted that hermits seem to be valuable gorg groomers. When I had a Pterogorgia citrina, my Clibanarius digueti regularly kept it free of algae & diatoms...but maybe your tanks are too clean to need this service!



That's even thrilling to read about. Thanks for the evocative description.




Oh, those are fantastic! Congrats! Heck, if we're going to go "natural" we're gonna have brown. Those are just as fascinating as any other specimens...and quite pretty in their own right, as well.

--Diane

Thanks for looking Diane, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Too bad the photography doesn't equal yours. Interesting about the hermits. Oddly, my yellow sea blade is the coral that sheds its mucous coat the most, and I can't recall ever having seen hermits in it. Everyone seems to enjoy the coat when they can grab a piece, spaghetti worms, nassarius snails, and of course the hermits. Maybe it's hard to get to? Hmmm.
As for the quality of lifequestion, the spring breakers are funny, they rarely go to the park on the East end, preferring the bars and clubs in the Central area of PCB. Mostly we just avoid Wal-Mart, the beer selling king of Panama City Beach. Fortunaely it's about over, last weekend coming up.
Diane, I think you will really like Veron's "Corals of the World", unfortunately it is not a pocket guide or paperback. I find it the cheapest on Amazon, but it was still $150. My lovin wife got it for me for Christmas a few years ago. I think it amuses her how much I look at it. Fortunately, for the price you get a lot of material. It's three volumes and covers all the zooxanthellate scleractinians. There is some information on azooxanthellate forms and non-scleractinians, but they book doesn't focus much attention on them. It also has a fascinating section of the history, evolution and species relationships of the corals, along with quite a bit of habitat description. Unfortunately there is very little on the behavior of any of them. Fantastic pictures though.

A few years ago I was in an Atlanta lfs and purchased a neat hermit crab, quite large, but with a coral growing on his shell. He wandered around in my large tank display for some time, occasionally spending so much time under rocks that the coral would slightly bleach. When he finally grew too big for the shell and moved, I snatched the shell out of the tank and glued it to a flat piece of rock I'd cut for the purpose. It's been in several tanks of mine since then, most recently under T-5's in a prop tank. It's been one of those kind of corals that isn't very pretty, but that I just can never get rid of because of it'spersonal history.
Looking in Veron's book, I think I've identified it as a Siderastrea radians, and is one of the corals I've determined might be found here at the jetties under certain conditions, so I moved it to my jetties nano. Surprisingly it took to the change in lighting quite eagerly and has polyped out quite nicely. Seems to have found itself the proper home.

With the risk of boring anyone reading this thread, I've compiled a list of all the corals that might possibly be found in the biotope "St. Andrew's Pass Jetties", from a search of Veron's "Corals of the World" range maps. If nothing else, it will give you a list for a google search of corals that occur in the Gulf of Mexico.
Stephanocoenia michelinii - - Meandrina meandrites
Madracis pharensis - - Meandrina meandrites
Madracis formosa - - Meandrina braziliensis
Oculina varicose - - Dichocoenia stokesi
Oculina valenciennesi - - Siderastrea sidereal
Oculina robusta - - Siderastrea radians
Oculina diffusa -- Siderastrea stellata
Agarica tenuifolia -- Siderastrea stellata
Agaricia agaricites -- Leptoseris cucullata
Agaricia fragilis -- Astrangia poculata
Agaricia undata -- Mussa angulosa
Agaricia humilis -- Scolymia cubensis
Mycetophyllia lamarckiana - - Montastrea annularis
Cladocora caespitosa? - - Montastrea annularis
Cladocora arbuscula - - Montastrea cavernosa
Diploria strigosa - - Solenastrea hyades
Colpophyllia natans - - Porites branneri
Porites porites - - Porites furcata
Porites divaricata

Oooh, you are really whetting my appetite for the Veron's. I may have to buy it for myself as Xmas & my BD are far off... It seems a bit much to hint for for Mother's Day, don't you think?

Even though I've only ever had 3 little stonies to my name (and two of them were hitchers), I love to read about all corals, try to pick up some taxonomy, look at pics!--and think about "some day..."

(Funny that it should not have much on the azooxanthellates [hmm, type that often enough and you begin to see why Sprung, et al, prefer "ahermatypic!"], tho--evolutionarily they would seem to fall right in with the zooxanthellate taxa...Does he give a reason? )

That's a most impressive list of corals you amassed--and many enticing possibilities, eh? I love the story behind your Siderastrea! What serendipity! And it looks so lush and burgeoning in the pic. What a wonderful find. (Reminds me of Daniel getting a hermit for the 'nem on its shell. )

--Diane

Nice job with the pseudo region specific tank. not bad!

YB,
Fantastic finds and those corals look like they will be great additions to your tanks. I can't wait to see how they do in your tank. I also love the story about the Hermit and his coral.

Your list of corals for your region is quite impressive, I wish we had more up here but I am afraid my Cheasapeake Bay biotope I have been noodling with is going to have to be mostly non-photosynthetic inverts. We have some interesting stuff up here, but nothing like what you have available in your warmer waters.

Thanks for the bead on Vernon's book. I think I am going to have to give up my next reefing road trip for live stock to get this set of references. They sound awesome.

-Prof

cool tank.

would you like your thread moved to biotopes?

My goodness. Everything is great. I should take a trip down the jetties myself.

BTW I just love that name.

Thanks Smurf. It's a little more specific than "Central Pacific Reef Front" or "Australian Barrier Reef"
It's the place I go the most and gives me an excuse to explore it in a different way than I might have otherwise.

I finally found a small colony of tunicates. They aren't native to the area, but they certainly add a lot of color to the tank.


I normally don't use a flash to take shots of the tank, realized I probably should do it more, as the colors are different than when only the PC's are used. Here's the "mystery coral" that has really put on a growth spurt lately, with it's surprisingly green polyps. After I took this shot, I looked at the coral under just the pc's and realized I could see a green tint to the coral, but the flash brought it out

Wow! I like the fish in the second picture! Where did you get one of those? Do you do good in captivity? Are they hard to care for? Do you think you can catch me one of those? I'll pay shipping.

I didnt even notice the fish beind her till know lol

The "fish" is the girl.

Those are tough ones to take care of guys. They require very large tanks, special filtration and exotic feeding. It takes a lot of dedication and time to properly nurture them. And they do not ship well at all.

Ok. Thanks for the info! Maybe I'll get one in the future.lol

Mine bites every time it get close feeding time.

Wow. You must have a very aggressive one. Where did you get yours?

I've never known one that wouldn't bite when they got hungry. And they need to be fed three times a day!!!